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Tuesday, May 23, 2017

How do you cross young adult fiction with women's fiction? Go ask best selling author, Catherine Ryan Hyde who did it beautifully in Allie and Bea Allie and Bea debuts today on Amazon from their Lake Union publishing arm. For audio book lovers it' looks like it's going to be available at Audio Book Store. Right now at Amazon, if you buy the eBook you can add audio to it. (I went over to the Audio Book Store and listened to a sample and I really liked the narrator I heard. There are two narrators, one for each POV, I assume.)

Blurb: Bea has barely been scraping by since her husband died. After falling for a telephone scam, she loses everything and is forced to abandon her trailer. With only two-thirds of a tank in her old van, she heads toward the Pacific Ocean with her cat—on a mission to reclaim what’s rightfully hers, even if it means making others pay for what she lost.

When fifteen-year-old Allie’s parents are jailed for tax fraud, she’s sent to a group home. But when her life is threatened by another resident, she knows she has to get out. She escapes only to find she has nowhere to go—until fate throws Allie in Bea’s path.

Reluctant to trust each other, much less become friends, the two warily make their way up the Pacific Coast. Yet as their hearts open to friendship and love from the strangers they meet on their journey, they find the courage to forge their own unique family—and begin to see an imperfect world with new eyes.

ALLIE AND BEA proves that it’s never too late to start over and that in losing everything, you might just gain the courage to live the life you truly want.

I found Allie and Bea an absorbing and wonderful story. I was completely involved in both their view points and I think that both lovers of women's fiction and ya fiction will take the book to their hearts.I received an ARC of Allie and Bea from Little Bird Publicity. I also received a giveaway copy to share one with a lucky reader.a Rafflecopter giveawayAnd I am very grateful to them for introducing me to Catherine Ryan Hyde. I love her writing.. Catherine was born in Buffalo, NY, which is also my home town and now loves in Cambria, CA.I found this interview at Writer's Relief

Every writer has to learn how the publishing business works. How did you do it?

I joined the local Cambria Writers Workshop. I joined the semi-local SLO (San Luis Obispo) Nightwriters. I scratched up the money to go to conferences such as The Cuesta College Writers Conference and the larger Santa Barbara Writers Conference. I read my work out loud, even though I nearly died of stage fright. In doing so, I caught the attention of more experienced writers willing to mentor me. Then I utilized their kind offers of mentorship for all they were worth. They were worth a lot.

What role does social media play in staying connected to readers and/or building an audience?

In my mind, social media has replaced the book tour. Once upon a time, my publisher would send me to various cities on tour. I’d languish in airports, watch a lot of CNN in hotel rooms, and hope that more than four people would turn up at the bookstores. It hardly seemed worth it, but my publishers felt it was important for bookstore employees and readers to meet me. It breeds loyalty when a reader feels he or she knows the author. Today I build the same loyal relationships on Twitter and Facebook—from my easy chair at home. That makes my dog happy. And I hate that kind of travel, so it makes me happy too.

What was the biggest stumbling block or frustration for you so far, and how did you overcome it?

I think my biggest frustration was the fact that people loved the Pay It Forward concept, but really didn’t pay much attention to the book. At least, not as much as I had hoped. That’s one downside to a movie. People can just see the movie instead. It’s also an odd feature of a book with a lift-out message. People lifted it out and left the book behind.

I’m not bemoaning the fact that more people didn’t read the book. People can read or not read whatever they choose. But people would proclaim themselves my biggest fans, even ask me to fly across the country to speak to their groups, without ever reading a word I’d written. At the time my career was in a slump and I was having trouble staying out of Day Job Land, so I minded. Now I’m doing well with the newer books and able to be more circumspect. So getting by as an author again was enough to overcome it. I just had to keep moving forward.

Fill in the blank. Rejection is____________.

Not always as much of a judgment on the quality of our writing as we assume it to be.

Has a particular rejection ever been helpful to you? What were the details?

Yes, once a combination of an acceptance and a rejection was extremely helpful. My first short story acceptance came to me from a literary magazine called South Dakota Review. The editor said I’d shown “great poise” in the way I’d “depicted the characters with brief brush strokes.” The same story had just been rejected by a smaller, less prestigious literary magazine whose editor felt there was a “hollowness” to the characters.

From this I learned two important things: 1) Some editor may love your work for exactly the same reason another editor doesn’t. 2) Unless you agree that the editor has pointed out a valid flaw, revising your work based on comments in rejections will usually get you nowhere.

This article has been reprinted with the permission of Writer’s Relief, a highly recommended author’s submission service. We assist writers with preparing their submissions and researching the best markets. We have a service for every budget, as well as a free e-publication for writers, Submit Write Now! Visit our site today to learn more.